Quad-City Times: Update on Bargegate
Date: Tue, 02 May 2000 07:11:44 -0700
Digging deeply
By Barb Arland-Fye, QUAD-CITY TIMES -- April 30, 2000

You've got a 25,000-piece jigsaw puzzle of the workings of the Upper
Mississippi and Illinois rivers. The pieces are scattered everywhere.

You bring in a bunch of politicians to put the puzzle together without a

picture of what it is supposed to look like.

They grab handfuls of pieces, go off to separate corners of the room and

assume they can put the puzzle together without all of the pieces.

That scenario might best illustrate the reason for delays in the outcome
of at
least five investigations of the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers and its
contentious, $54 million navigation study.

Just 10 days ago, the federal Office of Special Counsel granted a
two-month
extension to the U.S. Department of Defense in its investigation of a
whistleblower's accusations of illegalities in the 7-year-old navigation

study.

In February, the special counsel submitted the whistleblowing case
against
the Corps to the Secretary of Defense and requested a report in 60 days.

The special counsel says there exists a substantial likelihood that
Corps
officials have engaged in violations of law, rules or regulations and a
gross waste of funds.

The Defense Department requested an extension until June 28 for a
variety
of reasons, said Jane McFarland, director of congressional and public
affairs
with the special counsel's office.

She said the Defense Department cited the complexity of the study and a
list of as many as 50 witnesses, some of whom also may be witnesses in a

separate House Appropriations Committee investigation.

There is plenty of duplication to go around. Here is a list of the
investigations and hearings that have multiplied since accusations were
first leveled against the Corps and the navigation study in February.

The Corps of Engineers' internal review. Completed in March, the review
found no improprieties in the study. But requests were made for some
clarification and additional information, which has been provided, said
Gary Loss of the Corps' Rock Island District.

 The U.S. Department of the Army Inspector General's review to the
Office
of Special Council. Due June 28.

U.S. Sen. George Voinovich, R-Ohio, conducted a Corps of Engineers
budget
hearing Feb. 24 in the Senate Subcommittee on Environment and Public
Works.
He expanded the hearing to address serious concerns about the
objectivity
of the navigation study's examination of costs and benefits to
locks-and-dams
improvements. He also requested a General Accounting Office report.

The House Upper Mississippi River Caucus conducted an informal hearing
March 9. Caucus members are congressmen representing states through
which
the river flows, including Iowa and Illinois.

National Academy of Science report due in November.

In addition, the Senate's Appropriations, Armed Services and Environment

and Public Works committees have joined forces to probe inappropriate
political
influence concerning the Corps study and investigations of it, said
Chris
Brescia, the president of the Midwest Area River Coalition, or MARC,
2000.
Its members include agricultural groups, the river industry, communities

and business-oriented organizations such as the Quad-City Development
Group.

U.S. Sen. Charles Grassley, R-Iowa, also has asked the General
Accounting
Office to examine the navigation study, Grassley and U.S. Sen. Tom
Harkin,
D-Iowa, have asked the Food and Agricultural Research Institute to
review
it and U.S. Rep. Lane Evans, D-Ill., has asked for the House
Transportation
and Infrastructure Committee to hold hearings, too.

There is no denial that politics make the probes go 'round.
"Everything we do is political," said Bill Tate, administrative
assistant
to U.S. Rep. Jim Leach, R-Iowa. "Our process, as cumbersome and
slow-moving as
it may be, is controlled conflict and, through that conflict of
competing
interests we try to arrive at a reasonable compromise," Tate added.
"This
is going to be, I'm afraid, a long, drawn-out affair."

"We're trying to find out what happened and from that take something
positive from it and make a clear-eyed decision about what to do about
the
locks and dams," Dennis King, Evans' chief of staff, said.

That the study is getting so much attention, King added, is a tribute to

the importance people place on the Corps' work and the value of the
Upper
Mississippi River.

Gary Loss, the navigation study's project manager, said several people
from
the Corps' Rock Island District, which he also serves, have been
interviewed by the House Appropriations Committee. Among them are Col.
James V. Mudd,
commander of the Rock Island District and the study's leader, Paul
Soyke,
the chief economist with the Rock Island District, and Ken Barr, chief
environmental analyst with the Rock Island District.

Loss estimates that as many as 20 people from Corps work groups in its
Rock
Island, St. Paul, St. Louis and New Orleans districts have been
interviewed
about the study. That typically involves two to three hours of
interviewing
in addition to time spent pulling background information for the
interviews.

"The study team in general has been sending volumes and volumes of
information to the various investigation groups," Loss said.

"Dave Tipple, the study's assistant project manager, has been spending a

lot of time compiling these reports and sending them off. There's
probably
three or four places we've sent the same reports," Loss said.

The information has been offered in compact disc form for use on
computers,
but the investigators often ask for hard copy. That is what they're
getting
-- a 12- to 15-inch thick pile of paper -- he said, adding, "A lot of
the
information is available on CD and on our Web page."

Investigators have received reams and reams of data on fish mortality
rates, backwater sedimentation and river traffic for the past 60 years,
previous
rehabilitation costs and projections for the future, he said.

"In general, we're glad they're asking for these reports so they can get

the real information about what's going on," he said, adding, "We wish
we had a
draft of the report so it would be all pulled together in a neat
package."

But the draft report, which Corps officials had hoped to produce for
public
airing this summer, will be delayed until this fall, because of the
ongoing
investigations, he said.

The domino effect continues with the final recommendation, which was due
to
Corps headquarters in December.

Loss' work continues on the draft study. "We've been working on the
environmental, engineering, economics part of it. We've had some
distractions with the investigations."The delays, he added, could impact

the chances of navigation improvements being included in the Water
Resources
Development Act of 2000 and jeopardize the continuation of the
Preliminary
Engineering and Design funding for those improvements. The Corps
received
$5.4 million in 2000 to do some of the preliminary engineering and
design
work, Loss said.

If Congress waits for the feasibility study before allowing preliminary
engineering and design, "our ability to begin construction is several
years
in the future," he said. "If we can do it now, we'll have the ability to

start construction sooner."

NOTICE: In accordance with Title 17 U.S.C. Section 107, this material
is distributed without profit to those who have expressed a prior
interest
in receiving this information for research and educational purposes.


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